


Death is the serrated edge clutched in someone else’s hand

by chimesDissent



Series: No eleventh hour reprieve [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Images of bodily harm, Parental Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 14:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimesDissent/pseuds/chimesDissent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you don’t have to think about it, then you can pretend like it’s not even there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death is the serrated edge clutched in someone else’s hand

It's like a deep cut etched into your skin, it aches and stings at first, but after you start ignoring it, the pain fades until you forget the cut is even there.

But then, when you know you need to tend to it, to clean and wrap it so it doesn't leave a jagged scar, you grow too scared to look at it because then all the pain will come racing back again.

So you keep ignoring it, hiding any traces of it being there and refusing to talk about it when someone brings it up.

You just laugh it off and dodge their questions because eventually they’ll get tired of the tricks and they'll leave you alone.

But the wound doesn't heal like it should have.

The skin pulls tight, stretching farther than it’s meant to be stretched, and the color leaks out in some places, leaving a pale hue in its absence, mingled with the spare red. And the few times you gather up the courage to look at the scar, you wonder if maybe those faded cracks in your skin would have disappeared if you had cared long enough to tend to it while it was fresh.

It’s too late to think about any of that though. There are cooler things to focus your mind on now, new friends to make, new games to play, new life experiences just one step ahead. And maybe you just need to let go of those things that remind you of your old wound.

So one night, when everyone else is tucked away in their beds, you walk out to the side of the golden ship and you stare at the stars racing by.

This doesn’t seem like such a bad spot to let go of a few things. So you empty your sylladex of all the items you’re tired of carrying and one by one you toss them out into the rest of the universe, hoping that someone else will have better use for them than you.

But when you reach for that single dirty hat, your hand pauses and for a moment you regret what you’re doing because you know that you’ll never get these things back.

And when the ache comes racing back against your scar, you grab the hat and throw it towards the stars with the rest of your dad’s old belongings and you watch as it drifts out of your sight.

You stand there for a while longer, feeling a bit less weighed down, and you’ll eventually carry yourself off to bed and you will sleep great. Your scar doesn’t hurt anymore now because you don’t ever have to think about it.

And you don’t know it yet, but years from now, you will stand at your kitchen counter and you will regret that simple act of throwing out his hat. 

Because you can’t remember the smell of your dad’s shoulder whenever he would pull you in for a hug (nor the way he laughed at your more ridiculous pranks, nor the sound of his voice when he would call you down for dinner, nor the way his eyes would crinkle in delight when you would tell him that you’ve made new friends today).

But you know that if you could just hold that hat again, press your face into it and _breathe_ , then it could feel like he is actually standing behind you now, ready to say all the things a good dad would say.

But that hat is gone forever, and so is he.

So you will stand at your counter, trying so hard to push those memories back up to the surface of your brain, but you can’t because they’ve been neglected for so long.

And when the oven timer dings, you’ll jolt back to the present, let out a shaky breath, and push your oven mitts onto your hands.

And there’s a cake waiting inside that oven, one that you’ll eat by yourself over the next two weeks because no one needs to know that you carry all of this inside you.

Its name is grief and it has burdened you for the whole of your life.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I think John could be dealing with his grief the same way my younger brother does, and I always wonder what it must be like to live with that.


End file.
